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CLAIRE PRENTICE
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GRANTLY LYNCH AND KONE
With the population of the world growing at
a rapid rate, land in our cities is under greater
pressure than ever before. Building tall represents
the only sustainable solution, says Antony
Wood, Executive Director of the Council on Tall
Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH). And, he
believes, advances in building technologies and
intelligence mean there is no longer any structural
limit on how tall buildings can go.
the only way iS
up
E
very day, nearly 200,000
people move or are born
into urban areas around
the world. To accommo-
date, the equivalent of a
new city of more than one
million people needs to be
built every week. It’s an astonishing sta-
tistic and one which has profound impli-
cations for the future face of the world.
So can we afford to keep growing
outward into rural areas? Or is the only
way upward, building dazzling cities in
the sky?
antony wood
, the executive
director of the Council on Tall Buildings
and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), believes
the horizontal model of urban
development with a dense downtown
working core and ever-expanding
suburbs has had its day.
“It’s unsustainable in the future
because of the energy it takes to create
and operate that city,” says Wood.
“It’s mostly about the infrastructure –
the roads, the sewage, the power and
transportation to and from city to
suburb and the energy that’s wasted,
the time that’s wasted, the pollution
that’s created. Humanity can no longer
survive on this planet unless our cities
densify.”
new european heightS
While North America, Asia and the
Middle East have embraced the
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| PEOPLE FLOW
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